Author: Stephen Taylor

The Liberal crusade against Temporary Foreign Workers hit a snag this afternoon after James Moore revealed in Question Period that Justin Trudeau once petitioned the Canadian government for work permits.

In the letter, Trudeau asks the Canadian embassy in China that work permits be considered for Chinese nationals for a restaurant in the riding of the Papineau MP. Trudeau pleads that the workers are needed for a restaurant that served his own father and caters to Hollywood celebrities.

UPDATE: The Conservative Party has issued a dispatch on this revelation,

Justin Trudeau – In Over His Head on Temporary Foreign Workers
 
– Justin Trudeau is in over his head.
– Yesterday, the Liberals introduced a motion in the House regarding their concerns with the temporary foreign worker program, and yet their leader wrote to us asking that foreign workers in the food service industry be rushed in to his riding.
– What did Justin think that temporary foreign workers could add to Montreal’s food service industry that 100,000 Canadian workers in that industry could not provide?
 
– Does Justin not understand the program, did he forget that he made such a demand, or is he just in over his head?
– The leader of the Liberal Party refused to explain himself in Question Period today. We call on him to do so immediately.
 
Facts:
 
– The Liberal record on the Temporary Foreign Worker program has been abysmal.
– While in government, the member from York West fast-tracked the temporary foreign worker application of a stripper who worked on her election campaign.
– The member from York West was then forced to step down from cabinet after she was accused of promising a foreign pizzeria-owner living in Canada that he could stay longer if he supplied her campaign team with free pizza and garlic bread.
– Since the program’s inception in 1976, the Liberal Party has failed to introduce substantive and effective reforms despite having plenty of opportunities to do so. Instead, they fast-tracked the process for several occupations including strippers, and tried to use the program for their own political gain.

Updates from other parties will be posted as they are received.

From the Toronto Sun,

OTTAWA – NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice refuses to retreat from a blog post that praises communists and slags the First World War as a “capitalist” conflict.
 
Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney has demanded Boulerice apologize for the 2007 post that came to light on Tuesday on the 96th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
 
Boulerice offered no defence of his comments, but he did shoot back at Blaney on Wednesday.
 
“I think Mr. Blaney yesterday, it was the last day to engage in partisan politics and to try and score points like that, with old stories,” said Boulerice in Montreal.
 
“He is the minister who is making the largest cuts in support programs for disabled veterans.”
 
In his post on the blog Presse-toi a gauche (Hurry to the left), Boulerice questioned the value of the Battle for Vimy Ridge, mocked the First World War as “a purely capitalist war on the backs of the workers and peasants” and lauded communists for their opposition to it.
 
The comments lit a firestorm of controversy, with the National Citizens Coalition (NCC) joining the barrage and aiming its guns on Boulerice’s admiration for communist activists.
 
“It is shocking to think that Mr. Boulerice would be praising communists as having foresight,” said NCC Director Steven Taylor. “The rest of us exercise our benefit of hindsight and realize that communism has been one of the most destructive ideologies ever imposed upon human industry and ingenuity.”

It all looked so promising to the folks at the Public Service Alliance of Canada,

OTTAWA, April 11, 2013 /CNW/ – As part of the ongoing “Harper Hates Me” campaign, designed to draw attention to the dangerous impact of Conservative cuts to public services, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, National Capital Region (PSAC-NCR) today released an interactive web app allowing Canadians to poke fun at our notoriously aloof Prime Minister.
 
“We believe the Prime Minister should be more accessible to his constituents,” said Larry Rousseau, PSAC’s Regional Executive Vice President for the National Capital Region. “To that end, we are offering Canadians this web 2.0 tool. Now, it will be easier than ever to reach Stephen Harper and let him know what you think of his cuts.”
 
Canadians who visit the site www.Harper-says.ca will be able to write their own caption and add it to one of the photos from Stephen Harper’s Flickr account. They can then share it directly with the Prime Minister, and their friends, over Twitter and other social networks. Visitors will be able to get creative, and tell the world what they imagine Harper is thinking.

What could go wrong? Less than 24 hours later,

The Public Service Alliance of Canada is apologizing for offensive comments posted on its interactive website urging Canadians to write their own captions for photos of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Some of the captions written by users of the ‘Harper Says’ website were racist, while others attacked the prime minister’s family members.
 
The Public Service Alliance of Canada apologized for the site late Thursday afternoon.

This all allows the National Citizens Coalition to pose an important question to the members of PSAC who might be ashamed of their union leadership and how it wastes their dues on political campaigns… wouldn’t you like to be able to be able to withhold these dues so that unions are forced to meet the needs of their membership?